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Food system channels are proposed to be major components of the larger food system which influence health and illness.

Food system channels are defined, discussed in relationship to other food system components, considered in terms of historical food system changes, examined in relationship to wellbeing and disease, and proposed to have useful applications.

Food system channels are broad, organized, and integrated pathways through which foods and nutrients pass. Channels are larger in scale and scope than previously described food system structures like chains, stages, sectors, networks, and others. Four major types of contemporary Western food system channels differ in their underlying values and health impacts. (1) Industrialized food channels are based on profit as an economic value, which contributes to a diversity of inexpensive foods and chronic diseases. (2) Emergency food channels are based on altruism as a moral value, and try to overcome gaps in industrialized channels to prevent diseases of poverty. (3) Alternative food channels are based on justice and environmentalism as ethical values, and seek to promote wellness and sustainability. (4) Subsistence food channels are based on self-sufficiency as a traditional value, and seek self-reliance to avoid hunger and illness. Historical socioeconomic development of agricultural and industrial transitions led to shifts in food system channels that shaped dietary, nutritional, epidemiological, and mortality transitions.

Food system channels provide varying amounts of calories and types of nutrients that shape wellbeing and diseases. Sociologists and others may benefit from examining food system channels and considering their role in health and illness.

The study investigated the contributions of household farming in palliating the economic effect of COVID-19 during the lockdown period. The study was questionnaire-based involving 510 participants randomly drawn from 17 Local Government Areas in Enugu State. Data were collected on demographic data, household expenditure, farm plots size, crops cultivated, sufficiency and extent farm produce contributed to palliating the effect of COVID-19 shocks. Data analysis used descriptive statistics, PCA and ANOVA. 89% households were fully involved in farming during the lockdown which positively impacted on household economy and especially SDGs 2 and 12. The lockdown improved household food production and pushed towards a positive behavioral change towards food security. 85% households indicated interest in expanding their farm size after the pandemic. Land and capital unavailability were significant barriers to taking farming as a major occupation. Several policy options were proposed to improve food production at household levels to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 crisis on food security.

This chapter explores food culture in social media. It focuses in particular on the affordances offered by social media platforms to create, develop and negotiate individual digital identities, which mediate personal, social and professional relationships with and investment in food, nurture and wellbeing. It examines the adoption of specific social media platforms for commercial and societal use, as well as the significant impact that the digitally curated food culture identities of influential others such as celebrity chefs, food bloggers, lifestyle gurus and self-styled ‘experts’ can have on their followers. There is, for example, Twitter’s role as a monitor of food choice decisions and a data source for food-related consumer behaviour research, and the use of Instagram by brands and companies in contrast to Facebook’s deployment as a community‑building social media tool where interest groups can share information, views and mutual support. The photogenic, young female lifestyle guru is the object of special scrutiny in which the apparent effortlessness with which they have achieved the self they present and their legitimacy to pronounce on health and nutrition is called into question. Finally, the chapter does not offer comprehensive nor conclusive findings on the experiences and exchanges depicted here which develop an overview of social media food cultures. Rather, it presents a flavour of the complex nexus of issues surrounding engagement with the topic in terms of reflections on society itself and on the role such interactions play in the creation of self-identity.

The chapter is an auto-ethnographic account of the self-management of a chronic illness within the context of a participatory research project on Mediterranean Diet (MD). A group of Italian women with type 2 diabetes is following a non-medical, personal interpretation of the Mediterranean-style diet. The research account is preceded by a critical appraisal of the scientific narratives of the MD.

Analysis of epidemiological research on MD examines some methodological aspects of gender blindness in its scientific approach. The ethnography concerns self-management of MD diet and redefinition of gender relations.

MD is analyzed as a case of transplantation of yesterday’s cultural and social capitals of the peasant classes, to today’s discourses on food considered as appropriate for affluent people suffering from satiety diseases. The ethnography highlights gender aspects of biographical work, examining in particular a “conversion” dietary model.

The ethnography must be amplified to include women and men from different social classes with various Mediterranean cooking habits, and family and gender patterns.

The chapter highlights cultural processes for women’s empowerment in self-managing type 2 diabetes.

This chapter may represent a seminal sociological work on chronic illness, gender and food studies in one of the “native” contexts of the Mediterranean-style diet.

The UK food retailing sector has undergone a radical transformation over the last 70 or so years. It has become a sector dominated by very large businesses with considerable power over both the upstream and downstream supply chain. The scale and power of those leading retailers has attracted considerable academic focus and political attention. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, global concern has emerged via a number of grand challenges including sustainability. Retailers have increasingly sought to address issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability, both to stave off criticism and for reasons of operational efficiency. The scale of the UK’s leading food retailers thus becomes a two-edged sword; should these retailers be co-opted in the fight for global sustainability or radically challenged as the cause of many of the problems? This chapter reviews the changing roles of food retailers, their steps in CSR and then poses the question as the future role of retailers in this changing environmental landscape.